ThinkBroadband Speed Test vs SpeedTest.net

I'm on a Virgin Media cable connection which has a claimed speed of up to 150 Mbps. The ThinkBroadband Speed Test says the download speed is only 77 Mbps (peak 87 Mbps), but SpeedTest.net rates the download speed at 141 Mbps (peak 147 Mbps). Which one is correct and why should the two be different?

In reply to a post by FatLes12:

I'm on a Virgin Media cable connection which has a claimed speed of up to 150 Mbps. The ThinkBroadband Speed Test says the download speed is only 77 Mbps (peak 87 Mbps), but SpeedTest.net rates the download speed at 141 Mbps (peak 147 Mbps). Which one is correct and why should the two be different?

They are both probably correct

The difference is likely that Speedtest.net only offers a multithreaded test. This helps saturate connections and hides network contention issues (something VM is infamous for unfortunately). The TBB test uses both single and multi-threaded tests (depending I think on whether you are logged in or not). If you haven't done so yet ensure you are logged on next time you run the TBB test. It will then run both single and multi threaded tests and you'll probably see the single threaded test being lower than the multi.

Sadly that's just the way VM run things. It's generally accepted that while BT based products don't offer the headline grabbing speeds they do tend to run at the same speed 24/7 and offer a smooth and reliable experience. VM connections offer higher speeds outside of peak periods but on-peak often slow down a lot and suffer from jitter - the latter making them the bane of online gamers.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 21-Aug-15 22:56:32)

It is also possible that speedtest.net may have used on a server on a vm network avoiding peering

Re this post:-

In reply to a post by Andrue:

If you haven't done so yet ensure you are logged on next time you run the TBB test.

That means on the Main Site where the tester is.

It's a separate registration and login from the forums, but you can use the same nick and password if you want.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

It is also possible that speedtest.net may have used on a server on a vm network avoiding peering

Yeah... which is the reason Virgin don't react well when customers complain to them after using the TBB test.... it tells too many truths.....

I remember Virgin trying to tell me that they would only accept speed test results from their own servers as valid diagnostic... which was hilarious when those started showing the short comings too!

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by FatLes12:

I'm on a Virgin Media cable connection which has a claimed speed of up to 150 Mbps. The ThinkBroadband Speed Test says the download speed is only 77 Mbps (peak 87 Mbps), but SpeedTest.net rates the download speed at 141 Mbps (peak 147 Mbps). Which one is correct and why should the two be different?

They are both probably correct

The difference is likely that Speedtest.net only offers a multithreaded test. This helps saturate connections and hides network contention issues (something VM is infamous for unfortunately). The TBB test uses both single and multi-threaded tests (depending I think on whether you are logged in or not). If you haven't done so yet ensure you are logged on next time you run the TBB test. It will then run both single and multi threaded tests and you'll probably see the single threaded test being lower than the multi.

Sadly that's just the way VM run things. It's generally accepted that while BT based products don't offer the headline grabbing speeds they do tend to run at the same speed 24/7 and offer a smooth and reliable experience. VM connections offer higher speeds outside of peak periods but on-peak often slow down a lot and suffer from jitter - the latter making them the bane of online gamers.

Lol BT run some of parts of their network hotter than they should too, and so, many BTW based customers don't get max rate throughput 24/7 the bt back-haul has a history for having problems, just ask rev k about how good bt's networking is

Some of but not all of the speedtest.net servers return lower speeds during peak times, in general i find speedtest.net results very close to think broadband flash speed tester, although that does sometimes give odd results occasionally

Edited by tommy45 (Sat 22-Aug-15 12:49:27)